This study analyzes the discourse marker (henceforth DM)1) actually in college English textbooks (henceforth CETs) which have been most commonly used in college general English curricula in Korea. Based upon seven discourse functions of the DM actually used by native speakers in everyday language use, I analyze whether they are well represented in the CETs. The findings showed that although six functions of this marker were adequately presented in the CETs, their frequencies were somewhat dissimilar to each other: their uses as an informative marker and a contradiction marker were observed the most frequently, whereas their use as a disagreement-prefacing marker was observed the least frequently. In addition, their use as a topic-shift marker did not appear in the CETs. In addition, the DM actually appeared differently, depending on the CETs’ level. For instance, the frequency of actually was quite low at the beginner level as compared to actually at the advanced level, which resulted in interpretations that advanced-level students may use the DM actually more than low-level students. It is expected that this study can deepen our understanding regarding discourse markers and broaden relevant research field for the future.

This study aims to compare the English vocabulary used in Korean high school English textbooks with the one in the College Scholastic Ability Tests (afterwards CSAT) administered in the years of 2009-2013 by using a concordance program, NLPTools, and to make a list of vocabulary used only in CSAT. The findings are as follows: First, when compared with Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List, the 'Basic Words List' shows a conformity rate of 98.78%. Second, in terms of TTR (Type Token Ratio), there is no noticeable difference among the English textbooks. Third, in the respect of TTR, CSATs show higher figures, which means that CSATs' vocabulary is more difficult than that in the English textbooks and that for CSATs, annually each test has shown a gradual increase in the number of valid types. (This shows that more valid types to be learned are needed for the preparation of CSAT. Also the degree of difficulty in CSAT is getting higher.) Lastly, the higher level of the 208 words which occur only in CSATs illustrates that the gap between the vocabulary level of textbooks and that of CSAT needs to be reduced for normalization of public education.

This study analyzed the text readability of the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and High School English Ⅱ textbooks by focusing on reading and compared the difficulty levels between them. To analyze the readability, the Flesh 2.0 for Windows and the Web VP 1.5 (2003) were used. To find out about high school students’ attitudes and behavior towards English and their preferences of English books, a questionnaire consisting of ten questions was administered. The results revealed that the textbooks are more readable than the CSATs in terms of the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level (RGL) and Reading Ease Score (RES). The average length per sentence of the textbooks is shorter than that of the CSATs. Furthermore, the CSATs have a higher percent of academic words than the textbooks. The questionnaire results showed that the participants, 228 second-year high school boy and girl students, preferred CSAT prep books, followed by EBS books and textbooks. Based on the findings, the basic directions of the CSAT and the guidelines to write textbooks have been suggested.